


Genius

by Cicuta_virosa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bored Tony Stark, Bored Tony solves math, Coulson Lives, Fix-It, Genius Tony Stark, Happy Ending, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hydra (Marvel), James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, M/M, Mammography, Medical Device, Millennium Prize Problems, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers (2012), Shield doesn't fall, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony catches Hydra in time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21570502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cicuta_virosa/pseuds/Cicuta_virosa
Summary: Nine times someone suspected Tony was smarter than advertised, and the day Steve did something about it.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 108
Kudos: 933
Collections: Absolute Faves, Avengers Collection





	1. Prologue

It was the only valuable advice Howard gave him…No, it wasn’t true. There had been a time, when the intelligence of Tony had started to shine, when Howard had given him other good advices. Then, when Tony had reached the limits of what Howard knew, what Maria knew, and what his two special tutors, specialized in gifted kids, knew, even before he lost his first milk tooth, Howard had gone from proud to jealous.

But he had still given that last piece of advice, which he had repeated, years after years, until it was second nature to Tony.

“Don’t let them know how smart you are. You can let them see you’re smarter than them. You can even choose a speciality, and be a genius in it. But only one.”

Tony liked to think it was a way for Howard to protect him, to be sure he wouldn’t end up in a lab, and not a way to be sure nobody would know how much smarter Tony was.

A genius, but a normal one, not something so outside the usual parameters. So outside the human parameters.

For years, Tony buried it, and cheated as much as he could to obtain the intellectual stimulation he needed without letting people know the truth about him. But it was so, so damn hard. He developed Dummy first as a decoy: when people came to his workshop; they were too busy ogling his robot to pay attention to clues he would have left lying around, books in languages he wasn’t supposed to talk, about subjects he wasn’t supposed to be interested in, materials that had nothing to do with robotics…. Of course, then he got attached to Dummy, but that was a story for another time.

Internet development helped. With a few clicks, he could access so much knowledge, and he was capable of leaving no traces that even the most competent specialist could find.

He wrote Jarvis first to help him with that, and programmed him, Him, of course him, Jarvis wasn’t an It, to not let people understand the reach Tony had given him. Jarvis was an AI butler, no need for anybody to understand how big the I part was, no need for anybody to understand Jarvis had the reach to become the next Skynet.

No one knew.

No one was supposed to know, ever, not even Rhodey, not even Pepper, not even Obbie.

Thank God, or whoever was or wasn’t listening, that Obbie never knew.

Tony kept his secrets, and Jarvis helped him, and for years Tony kept it religiously his father best advice, his father last advice.

He revolutionized robotics and weapons, and kept to himself occasional forays into other domains.

Nobody could know, ever.

It was easier now. With Jarvis’s help, he could reach so much more to find the intellectual stimulation he craved so much. He didn’t need so much the booze and the sex and the party to try to numb his brain, his insatiable brain, and to forget how fucking lonely all of that was, even if he never really stopped those things, to best cover his tracks, just slowed them down.

Sometimes, he ever gifted himself the pleasure to do something with it. Oh, not a lot, he couldn’t, it was too dangerous. Nobody could know. He rationed himself to a few years a time, and he was always, always so careful to cover his tracks and to just…nudge things, never in the same domain, never to the same people. If the Pasteur Institute in Paris suddenly had a breakout in their research about a new genetically engineered vaccine against hepatitis B, and four months after a Mexican archaeological team working on the Monte Alban pyramid complex had one too, using their brand new magnetometers, nobody thought to search the computers of the Institute, or the magnetometers, to see if they had been accessed by an unauthorized party to push them into the good direction. Nobody would search, nobody would think to link the two, and if they did, nobody would even find something, because Tony didn’t leave trace, ever, and never just feed them the solution, just tinkered at things until the solution was evident.

And then Tony became Iron Man.

He couldn’t hide himself anymore. He couldn’t just…rake in knowledge to try to finally sate his brain. He needed to do something to help people, the same way he needed Iron Man to atone to his past blindness about SI and the shadowy deals of Obbie.

He just hoped he could balance the scale a little, atone a little, before they lock him up as a freak and started to tear his brain apart.


	2. Rhodey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhodey always knew Tony was smart, and he always knew Tony was interested in more than robotics despite his official bio, but post-Afghanistan, he realized a few things.

Rhodey had always known Tony was smart, since the second day he knew him. He had also always known Tony was a dumbass, since the first day he knew him, but the story of how he stopped fourteen-years-old MIT drunk Tony to drown in his own vomit is a story Rhodey had sworn to take to his grave.

He had also known Tony’s interests were more global than he pretended: during their second year at MIT, him and Tony had bunked together and it was before e-reader: there had been a constant rotation of books in their flat, on subjects going from history all across the world to sociology, biology, geology, anthropology, law…if it was something you could find in a library, Tony had at least once brought it back to their rooms.

The thing was, the books were coming and going so fast, Rhodey never thought Tony read all of them, never mind remembered them, but he saw enough to understand Tony was uncomfortable with his thirst for knowledge, so Rhodey never talked about it. One of the bedrock of their friendship was that there was some things never talked about, from Howard to Rhodey brief foray into tattoos. That curiosity of Tony for all sorts of subjects was just another one of those silent subjects.

After the Ten Rings kidnapping, once Rhodey had finally Tony safe at his side, sun-burned, half-delirious but alive, his brother was alive, he had refused to let Tony alone for more than bathroom breaks for almost four days. Sadly, the brace didn’t think “I can’t let him alone, he will be kidnapped again”, was a good reason for Rhodey to spend all his day following Tony around like a protective, well-armed duckling.

So, Rhodey had to get back to work, and Tony, without Rhodey’ supervision, Tony invented a second version of Iron Man, not that he had talked to _anyone_ about how he had escaped the Ten Rings, had his heart taken out by his father figure, blow up terrorists, almost died so many times Rhodey is breaking in cold sweat just thinking about it.

So, after the infamous “I’m Iron Man” conference, Rhodey put his bag down in Tony’s guest room. If the brass is not happy, he can always play the Iron Man ‘s surveillance card.

The next night, he was woken at three in the morning by Tony throwing himself onto his bed in a swan dive.

“I could have slept with a weapon!” Rhodey protested after a long bout of curses.

“You’re too smart for that,” Tony said, then clicked his fingers and the ceiling obediently started to project plans onto the bed, in that blue 3D crystal clear images Rhodey really hoped Tony would commercialise one day.

“What’s that?” He asked, because he knew Tony too well to ask the question someone else would have asked, like could it wait until morning.

“A factory,” Tony said, “well, a complex of factories.”

He let pass a moment of silence, something rare with Tony, and the proof that what he’s about to say is important. Tony can never simply tell important things, most of the time they are lost in a verbal diarrheal and people have to take at shoot at which parts of important, and sometimes, more rarely, he gets stuck at the beginning.

“Afghanistan will never know peace as long as almost twenty per cent of the economy is narcoeconomy. But there is a big Afghan diaspora, full of talent and skill, only waiting for a sign of durable peace, a sign of a chance, to go home. The military…” Tony shrugged. He had been at the same time quite discontent with the US military since going back, and at the same time inconsolable about the soldiers who died trying to stop the Ten Rings to take him. Their families will never know poverty, not in ten generations. Not that it could replace a son, a daughter, a brother.

“This,” Tony started again, “is the first clean copper factory ever. Self-sufficient in term of power, because the power grid of the country is not quite top notch right now, but I will work on that.”

“Self-sufficient, eh?”

“Yes, and look, it’s partnered with a factory to produce directly copper wires and cables, instead of sending metal in other countries for that part of the work. And I’m almost finished on my project for rare earth elements mining and treatments. Clean, not that crap they do in China. Legal is already working on a proposition for their governments. And a little help of the military would be welcome, instead of having to use the usual private companies of professional killers playing mercenaries, that’s why you’re coming in. And money, money is gonna be a little tight. I can’t sell too much part of SI, I need a controlling interest, but I’ve already given orders to sell the Ibiza Mansion, and the South Pacific private island.”

“You love that place.”

“Not as much as I love a chance for Yinsen’s country. And I’m pretty sure the IMF will help.”

“Tony…” Rhodey whispered, examining the plan. He was feeling overwhelmed. He was a rocket scientist, he didn’t know the first thing about copper mining, or what sort of factories copper need, but he knew Tony. If the other man, almost jittery from caffeine, would wake him up for that, the project was ready.

“Where did you find the time, with Iron Man and everything about your company? When did you have the time to research all of that?”

Tony shrugged.

“I already knew some stuff.”

“Stuff? You knew stuff about copper mining.”

“Yes, stuff,” Tony insisted, and then he opened another diagram, “Look at that, I have other ideas.”

Rhodey closed the diagram.

“Eh!”

“Tomorrow, Tony. The world will need saving tomorrow and I will help you.”

“….You will?”

“I will always help you.”

Rhodey turned, pushing Tony despite copious grumbling, until Tony was under the cover too, the little spoon to Rhodey big spoon, one of his wrist captured into Rhodey’s hand, the staccato of his heart reassuring under Rhodey’s fingers.

“Getting frisky, platypus.”

“If I thought you wouldn’t open them in ten seconds, I would even break out the handcuffs,” Rhodey joked.

“Oh, kinky.”

“Sleep, Tony.”

“I…”

“Shh. Sleep, I’m there. I will wake you up if necessary. Sleep, now.”

And, safe in his brother’s arms, Tony did.


	3. Pepper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody knows Tony Stark speaks only three languages. It's in his wikipedia page, therefore it must be true.....

Tony Stark spoke English, Spanish and French. It was in his official biography, on his Wikipedia page. Pepper knew it, had known for years which contracts and documents should be translated, and which shouldn’t, and she had heard him charm investors in those three languages, as fluent in the last two than he was in English, and sometimes charm people for more nefarious, one night stand reasons.

Once…no, twice, they were clues, but Pepper hadn’t interpreted them correctly. Once, at the beginning, she had arrived at Tony’s house earlier than usual, hoping to corner him into paperwork before he locked himself in the workshop for the day. On the kitchen table, there had been a paper book. In Tony’s house. Ἑπτὰ ἐπὶ Θήβας, proclaimed the cover and as Pepper opened it, the text was as obscure to her as the title.

“Pepper!” Tony had said from the doorstep, and there was almost a reproach in his voice.

“I didn’t know you read…Hebrew?” Pepper tried as a justification, because she had been his assistant for three months only and dammit, she needed that job.

“It’s Greek,” Tony had said, “And…it isn’t mine. A chick was there. Who knew literature major could be so brazen and sexually liberated!”

“Mister Stark!”

He had extracted the book from her grasp as fluid as if he was doing a magic trick.

“I will make sure it goes back to her,” he had said, and Pepper hadn’t asked anymore question, because she was terrified to learn the girl was a minor, and she needed the money from the job for her mother’s treatment. During the years, she thought sometimes about that moment. The more she knew him, the more she knew he would never touch a minor, because there were some lines in the sand Tony Stark never crossed, some things that wasn’t in his nature even at his most callous, self-hating self, and sometimes she asked herself why he had been so shifty about that girl, when the other were ejected by Pepper herself.

When he admitted to her one day he was bisexual, she put the mystery of that day on Miss Greek studies being a Mister Greek studies, and on Tony not being ready to out himself to her three months assistant, and never thought about it again.

Four years later, as they were visiting the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange, in a tour organized by a Vietnamese company they were ready to do business with, Tony had taken her, their head of the negotiation and Obadiah apart.

“They’re trying to muddy the water, in working with us.”

“What?”

“Something happened in one of the factories. Don’t know what, but I heard two of them when I went to the bathrooms. They want to pin it on SI.”

Obadiah had hesitated and Tony’s mood had turned to sombre.

“Do you want to take the risk? SI on the hot seat because of that?”

At the end, they didn’t do business with the Vietnamese company, and even received official thanks from the Vietnamese government for their help in discovering a vast conspiracy. Obadiah had it framed in his office. Years later, Pepper would understand he had been more happy to avoid SI in the eyes of the justice, which would have brought to lights his own horrors and traffics, than proud to have help making that part of Asia a little safer.

Pepper never asked herself why two of the conspirators had spoken English in the bathrooms. And if she had, she never would have reached the correct conclusion: that Tony had understood them in Vietnamese.

After Afghanistan, after Obadiah, she would think again of those two occasions, those two clues. Iron Man had entered the scene in quite a spectacular manner less than a week ago, and she had come back to Tony’s house one day to find him listening to a radio program in a language she didn’t understand and couldn’t identify. Later, she would understand she hadn’t surprised him. He had let her find him, because he was feeling lonely after Obadiah’s betrayal. The older of his friend, a man who had been more a father for him than Howard. He was feeling lonely and he had let her see something of him he would have hidden before, as a way to reach out, because he didn’t know how to do it in a normal way.

“What was it?”

“An Afghan radio.”

A moment of silence and then, he said: “There was…there was another prisoner with me. Yinsen. He saved my life. And he died, for me to live.”

He wasn’t looking at her, he wasn’t really present, lost in horrible memories where she couldn’t reach him.

“I’m…I’m learning his language. Only, I was so busy with my ideas of escape that I never asked him the good questions. Never really asked about his family, never really asked about his language. Do you know there are two official languages in Afghanistan? I; for me, had no idea, because I arrived as in conquered territories, and never thought I would talk to someone else in the country than our military.”

“So, how did you choose? Which one learning?”

“I’m learning the two. They’re two Iranian languages, how difficult can it be, once you know one? I’m starting with Pastho. I tossed a coin and Dari lost.”

“What? Tony, do you have any idea how long it is to learn a language? I will inquire and come back to you. Someone must know which language was your friend mother tongue.”

“Oh. Oh yes, of course, we can do that.” And Pepper asked herself how easy it was to Tony to learn a language, if learning two or one was almost the same for him.

That was the first time she understood Tony was more than robotics and stuff going boom. And during their stint at a couple, he had once come to bed with his StarkReader and told her to take a look at his books. A lot of titles were in languages she couldn’t understand.

“My dad said after three languages, you weren’t a polyglot, you were a trained monkey,” he said and it made so much sense from what she knew of the departed and not so much regretted Howard Stark.

“Well, I’m totally ready to be listen to poetry in other languages. I swear I will be properly seduced,” she had said to defuse the tension she could see in his eyes and in the corner of his mouth and he had laughed, as she hoped he would.

“I’m a hyperpolyglot,” he admitted, giddy with it, like he was thirteen years old and being found cool by the cheerleader he liked.

“I’m not sure how many languages you have to speak for that,” she said.

“Most of the time, it’s used for people who know eleven languages, or more.”

“More than eleven? How much do _you_ know?”

“…Twenty-four,” he confessed to a point behind her shoulder, apparently not ready to see her reaction. _Trained monkey_ …oh, she wasn’t a violent person, but if she could put her hands on Howard Stark! She threw her arms around his neck.

“And in how many of them can you talk dirty to me?” And a laugh escaped him and they rolled on the bed, where he obediently told her everything he wanted to do with her in a myriad of foreign words. And every one of them felt like a caress.


	4. Natasha

Since Natasha had been playing Nathalie Rushman, she had saw less orgies and crazy shenanigans that Tony Stark’s files at Shield and a simple search on Youtube let to believe. But she had been ready for them, so she wasn’t exactly surprised when Pepper had sent her to the workshop with her own codes one day, and she had found Tony and a half-naked woman.

If she had been really who she was pretending, she would have immediately turned around and flee with a few excuses. It was almost her reaction, to make sure her persona was coherent.

And then the real her, the Black Widow, pushed Nathalie apart and saw the irregularities in the scenario she already had imagined. The woman was at least thirty years older than Stark’s usual one-night-stand. The one-night-stands never had access to the workshop. Stark was wearing some dubiously clean jeans and a black sweater and the music was AC DC, not exactly a romantic playlist. The billionaire also was looking at her interruption with sharp eyes, stone sober, and there was anger in the curve of his lips, even if it was difficult to read with the small screwdriver in his mouth.

“Close the door,” he finally said, “I suppose you have signed the usual NDA about the research and innovations you could come across? You better have, or whoever handle our recruitments will hear from me.”

“I have, and I can come back later,” Natasha said, playing disinterest, when she was in fact very interested in whatever was happening there, outside of the profile.

He stared at her a few seconds more and turned to the older woman.

“Stay,” he ordered Nathasha, “you have small hands, you can help with the fine calibrating. Resyntje, this is Nathalie Rushman, she works for SI. Nathalie, this is Dr Janssens, from Amsterdam. The Netherlands, not the Missouri city.”

“Doctor.” Natasha saluted. The other woman, not ashamed of her naked torso, was peering down across Tony’ shoulders at whatever he was working on.

“Don’t bother with the buckle,” she said with a strong accent, “Since Miss Rushman is there, we can do a trial run just now. She can plaster the device against me.”

“Yeah, but it’s supposed to be used by only one operator.”

“We can handle that later. I want to see the new interface working.”

Stark turned and Natasha saw for the first time the device he was working on. It was a metallic half-sphere, the exterior as shiny as Iron Man, but grey instead of the red and gold, and the interior was full of little nibs in something that looked like plastic but, knowing Tony Stark, certainly wasn’t.

Natasha decided a question at that moment would be something Nathalie would have asked right that moment, and not at risk of being saw as a spy’s interrogation.

“What’s this?”

“A prototype for mammograms,” the doctor answered absently, and Natasha’s brain suffered from a small reboot, because that was so, so foreign as a subject of research for Tony-Robotics-And-Stuff-Going-Boom Stark.

“It will be more precise than the usual exam,” Dr Janssens was developing, “and will significantly reduce the risk of overdiagnosis and false negative.”

“Also, portative, because what sorts of beasts they are using today…” Stark said, where he was tinkering with one of his displays, calibrating something Natasha couldn’t understand.

“Put your hand there,” the doctor instructed Natasha, “There are no radiations, you don’t have to fear anything. Push the device against my skin, cupping my left breast. Like that, perfect. Done.”

“Pain?” Stark asked.

“A small pinch,” the doctor answered, “much less than the classical mammography. Small enough that it won’t be a motive of not-attending a re-screening.”

“We can do better,” Stark said; “It should be totally painless. Honestly, if men had their balls submitted to the same treatment, you can be sure something would already have been invented. What sort of Middle-Age-“

They were already forgetting her presence, so Natasha reengaged.

“I didn’t know SI is preparing a medical line,” she said and Stark turned to her so fast her neck was painful in sympathy for this.

“SI isn’t!,” he barked, “And you better remember I can sue you to the moon if you talk.”

“Don’t be rude,” the other woman chastised and to Natasha’s surprise, his anger relented, and he gave her a charming smirk, all heat and lust.

“I’m Tony Stark,” he said and as a professional liar, she could admire the craft of a good actor, all false charm that would have work on anyone else, “I’m Tony Stark, playboy and America’s most lustful Casanova,” and then his smile turned self-deprecating.

“How much do you think people will trust that sort of medical device, specialized in breasts if I am the one designing it?” and he wasn’t wrong about that.

“If it so much better, you can’t keep it to yourself,” Natasha tried, just to see his reaction.

“I’m not. Dr Janssens here is the head of an oncology department in her country. The device will be their official brain’s child. They’re already selecting women for a first trial.”

“I still think we should tell people your role. Perhaps after a few years, when everybody can see how best it is,” the doctor remarked, and Natasha saw what the other woman couldn’t, the small micro-expression of Stark. He hadn’t told that woman about the palladium, hadn’t told her he wouldn’t be there in a few years. And perhaps it wasn’t exactly nice of her to be satisfied with that, but if he had been close enough to tell her, a woman Shield hadn’t even noticed in his contacts, Natasha would have been professionally vexed.

“Sure,” he lied naturally.

“It’s wonderful what you have conceived,” Natasha said, “and I won’t tell anyone, of course. It’s important work.” And once again, that micro expression. Stark, no matters if that device saved some women’s lives and offered other the possibilities of screening without pain, didn’t believe it wiped the red in his ledger, something Natasha could empathize with.

She needed to destabilize him to be sure he would answer her next question; so she started to open her white blouse.

“Since when are you interested in that subject?”

“Hm? I dabbled in medicine younger, Dr Janssens was one of my scientific correspondents, you could say.”

“Except I didn’t know you were Tony Stark,” the other woman remarked and it sounded like an old debate.

Natasha took down the rest of her buttons.

“Miss Rushman!” and really, America’s most lustful Casanova was doing his best to not look, so, so many things were wrong in his profile, things that had been rendered obsolete by Afghanistan or perhaps which hadn’t been so important to his personality, and Shield’s psychologists would hear of it!

“Well, if you’re testing it on your co-conspirator, it’s still a secret, so you need more breasts, don’t you? Before Dr Janssens take it back to Amsterdam.”

“…”

“This is an important subject, and I have no problem contributing.”

“The bra too, then. Have you already done a mammogram? You’re too young but sometimes…”

Natasha learned a few things that afternoon, things that the other two probably even realized she had learned. That Tony Stark, when he was distracted by his work, spook Dutch to Dr Janssens. That _one of my scientific correspondents_ apparently indicated a woman he had been corresponding with for years. That the good doctor had been sure he was a fellow specialist before he had reached out as Tony Stark after his return of Afghanistan. That his interests on the subject weren’t limited to the prototype and she was pretty sure, reading between the lines, he had also helped design new treatments protocols.

Where, when, and why had Tony Stark learned enough about oncology for that, discreetly enough that Shield themselves didn’t learn it, that, she didn’t succeed to learn.

Later, when she was busy with her reports, she thought long and hard about that. About lives saved and red on ledger and redemption.

And that peculiar afternoon, she totally omitted in her reports.


	5. Phil Coulson

Tony was the first on site, once Loki was gone. Jarvis had total control of the helicarrier cameras and on the display in the helmet, kept for Tony a count of SHIELD agents down. The AI, already working to flush out the virus sent by Loki’s team, saved a few of them, disrupting the attackers communication, locking fire doors, taking control of an experimental drone in the labs, but it wasn’t enough to save all of them.

When Phil Coulson was pierced by the staff, Jarvis flagged his name in red and Tony, who had just saved the helicarrier from crashing down and sending the numbers of victims of the day in the triple digits, Tony cursed and rushed to Coulson.

If he broke a few doors on the way, Jarvis knew to cover his tracks. From the moment Coulson went down to the moment Fury found him, the cameras stopped functioning in that area. Not surprising, with the virus Barton had sent. And the same cameras clearly saw Tony working an extra urgent repair in the suit, alone in a cargo bay, something no one could find strange, after the suit and its pilot playing flipper ball to save the entire ship.

Instead, Tony took his helmet down and leaned on Coulson.

“Don’t talk,” he urged the agent, and Coulson had a wet laugh, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth.

“Can’t a man have some last words?”

“They won’t be,” Tony promised, as a small compartment opened at the waist of the suit. He took out an injector, red and gold, and without a word pushed it against Coulson’s belly. Whatever he injected, the burn was strong enough to numb for a second the trauma of his wound.

“Shh, shh, I know, it hurts, I’m still working on that,” Tony said, petting the other man in a strange gesture. It was like a moment of comfort offered by someone who had heard about it, but never experimented it.

“I was never there,” Tony said and Coulson would have asked what he meant, but he was losing the fight against passing out.

When Fury arrived, Coulson was alone and unconscious; and he stayed unconscious for a whole week, during which Fury continued the charade of his death with the Avengers. He couldn’t exactly tell them the man had survived, if Coulson died from his wound the next day, he tried to justify to himself. And he was too busy feeling the first guilt he had felt in a long time, when he saw Barton and Romanov’s grief, to observe how shifty Stark looked every time Coulson’s sacrifice was mentioned.

He was also too busy stopping his scientists to dissect Coulson instead of saving him. The agent should have bleed out long before the medics’ arrival, but there was a strange, totally unknown substance in his blood, which had stopped that from happening. The SHIELD scientists had tried to extract it from Coulson, without success. If the sensors of SHIELD’s medical hadn’t been a secret gift from Carol Danvers to Fury, centuries ahead of what was found on Earth, the substance wouldn’t even had been found. Whatever it was, it had repaired torn blood vessels, insinuated itself in the liver and took over for a week, as said liver was repairing itself way too quicker.

The scientists were too busy arguing between them, chemical or nanites, to ask themselves the question of why Loki’s sceptre would left that behind, but Fury asked himself the question every night, the only moment he could free himself from his responsibilities and sit down at one of his oldest friend bedside.

He never found the answer, but in a life where he had buried too many friends, he was too happy for that to be anything else but a footnote.

And when Coulson, way better if still pale and having lost weigh he couldn’t afford, asked for the position of the Avengers handler, Fury gave in, even if he wanted more to put him on a fly for a beautiful place for a much needed vacation. Warm water and coconut, which was what he had imagined for Phil, not playing mahouts for a bunch of superheroes.

To Fury’s surprise, Stark, the one he was sure would protest and make nanny parallels, simply opened his Tower to Coulson, and offered to design new, much better, bulletproof jackets for the SHIELD agents.

“Guaranteed Chitauri’s weapons proof too,” he had added, “and the minute we find Loki’s sceptre again, you can be damn sure they will be that-proof too. And I have idea about your turbines, too, because I won’t play flipper ball again, thank you very much.”

Fury didn’t ask questions, because the entire SHIELD was already salivating at the idea of something designed by Tony Stark. They would have preferred weapons but it was already more than the entire Senate had succeed to obtain of him in years.

Fury wasn’t there to see how, the first evening of Coulson in the Tower, he took the lift down to the workshop, dressed down to make sure Tony understood it wasn’t an official visit, jeans and swearer knitted by his mother, and just a paper bag under his arm, and the workshop opened for him.

It was the first time they were alone since the moment Tony had injected Coulson.

“Thank you,” the agent said, and he saw Stark pale.

“I wasn’t sure you remembered,” the Avenger admitted.

“I always try to remember when someone save my life.”

Stark shifted, shrugged, clearly uncomfortable and Coulson? Coulson had been trained all those years to read people and it was quite a shock to understand how much he had misread Stark all along. He played the wounded card to make the other man more comfortable

“Can I sit? I tire so easily this day.”

And Stark’s shoulders lost of a little of their tension, once Coulson was sitting on the couch, once it was clear he couldn’t reach Stark quick enough to be a danger.

Whatever the billionaire had injected him with, he really would have preferred Coulson didn’t remember.

“Thank you for saving my life,” he said again, and Stark bit his lips, a shy gesture, totally in contradiction of his whole profile.

“You can’t say it to anyone else,” he finally pleaded, “because…because it’s still experimental.”

Coulson simply arched an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t totally sure it would work,” Tony said, “I mean, I knew, of course, I designated it to work, but the blood loss need to be significant enough to trigger a reaction, and Jarvis never let me test it on myself.”

“Because significant blood loss isn’t on laboratories recommended safe practices, even this one,” the AI interjected, and there was something long suffering in his tone, which made Phil believe it was a usual debate.

“Nanites or chemical?” Phil asked, because he had heard for days the SHIELD scientists yell at each other about it.

“Nanites,” Tony said, and he looked, cautiously, happy to talk about it.

“I didn’t know SI was developing a medical line.”

“We aren’t. Not yet. I mean, I have ideas, but…”

“Are you telling me you developed that alone? When did you learn so much about human anatomy? About medicine?”

And Tony blushed. Phil had more and more ideas to buddle him up in a duvet and to bake him his Dad’s famous strawberry trifle, something he usually reserved for hurt baby agents and his teenager nephews and nieces.

“St-Tony, it would revolutionize trauma surgery. The numbers of life saved…”

Tony stopped him.

“I still need to work on it. I can’t go to the board with it. Not yet.”

“Is it so unsafe?”

“No, but it’s bloody exorbitant. I’m using vibranium. They will want to commercialize it like that, because it would make a lot of money; but it will be reserved to people with deep pockets. I can’t go with it to the board, only with an affordable version, something we could commercialize all over the globe.”

“Can’t you made that version available first?”

“The board would lock me out at the first whisper of the other one, to protect the money they would make on the first one. I can’t lose SI, I can’t. I _need_ the reach it gives me.”

“I believe you.”

Tony deflated immediately.

“Just like that?”

“Greed isn’t reserved to your board, I’ve seen it in other people. And you know them better than me.”

“Oh.” And he sounded so surprised to be believed…

“Now, tell me the hard truth?”

“About what?”

“How much costed the dose you gave me.”

“You probably don’t want to know.”

“That bad?”

“Worse. Even _me,_ I find the amount indecent. We send people to the space station with less money.”

“Well, my monetary values certainly increased. Do you want the help of SHIELD with it? No, no need to grimace, it was a sincere offer. I won’t say anything, to anyone, until the second version is ready.”

“Not even to Fury?”

“If he protests later, I will make him remember the time he told everyone I work with I was dead. And didn’t think about the possibilities one of them, or a lot of them, would reach to my family for condolences.”

“Outch.”

“Oh yes. Fury can be happy my mother hasn’t his personal number.”

Phil opened the paper bag he had brought and extracted a bottle and two glasses. He could feel Stark’s curious eyes, like a physical feeling. He hadn’t realized before Stark never gave people the full weight of his attention and he felt a little like an insect under a magnifying lens.

“What’s that?”

Phil let him see the label.

“My father’s favourite single malt. Probably not what you’re used to, but he’s a bit of a liquor snob, so it should be good.”

“Why do you…”

“You saved my life, so I’m having a drink with you. And since your project is top secret, what would you say of preening, for once, with a human audience? I’m not as smart as Jarvis, but I would be happy to know more about the stuff in my veins….And first, if I get shoot tomorrow, would it still work? A second time? A third?”

Tony’s face was comical, and from the ceiling, Jarvis interjected: “Now, perhaps sir understand better my poor circuitry reaction to your desire of testing?”, because he was definitely Tony Stark’ sarcastic brain child.


	6. Bruce

Bruce had just met a Norse God, and Captain America, and played with an alien artefact in a flying helicarrier, helped stop an alien invasion, and no one of those things were as interesting as Tony-Poke-The-Hulk Stark.

Not because of the poking thing. That was stupid. Only, Bruce understood perfectly well smart men could do stupid things.

Like poking the Hulk.

Or like using yourself as guinea pig and becoming the Hulk.

So, nothing of the multiple quirks and bad habits of a person could stop them of being a genius.

What most people didn’t understand was that word could mean such a range of beings. Intelligence was such a complex subject, could cover so many significances. Where was the limit? Differential calculus? That would exclude people like Mozart, like Picasso? Did people who changed the world were genius? Medicine had studied people with significant mental disabilities capable of learning easily ten languages.

So, Bruce was very careful in using the word genius.

He still thought the word was perfect for Tony-Learned-Thermonuclear-Physics-Last-Night-Stark. If any of the Avengers or the SHIELD officers had a grasp of what exactly Bruce and Tony’s work on the sceptre entailed, they wouldn’t have treated the subject as so easy. Three, perhaps four other people in the world could have understood their work that day, and Bruce was sure nothing of that had been on Tony’s official studies on the MIT.

The months that passed after the battle of New York were of the same substance. Fury, or Captain America, or any other Avengers, asked of them some impossible feats of engineering, biology, genetics, or whatever the science domain of their mad scientist of the day was, anything, a weapon, a gadget, something, to stop said mad scientist to change the target of the day, New York most of the time but not always, into a flaming wreck, and Bruce and Tony delivered.

Well…sometimes, Bruce delivered, and there were, really, way too much idiots with access to Gama radiations. Did his own example teach them nothing? Did they thought green was their colour? Every other time, Tony delivered, with Bruce’ along on a crazy science ride. Neurobiology, molecular biology, mathematical modelling, biotechnology, astrobiology, applied mechanics, thermonuclear physic, cryptography, software engineering…those were a few of the domains Tony used at the drop of a hat, always proving himself a specialist only a few people in the worlds could have followed.

And when the fires were put out, everybody was too happy they had stopped the world from burning for another day to really question it.

A few times, Bruce was sure Tony had delayed the answer. Every of those times, no human life had been in danger. In the case victims were possible, Tony had spat the answers so quick Bruce had whiplash. And every time, he had seen Tony observe him. If someone could understand how…unusual his work was, it was Bruce, the only Avengers close enough.

And Bruce?

Bruce said nothing. Never.

He had been a prodigy child, he knew what it was to tone down his brain to make himself more acceptable by his peers. And Tony probably had had the same problem, but exponentially inflated.

Bruce was feeling quite protective of his science bro, to use Tony’s words.

And the Hulk?

The Hulk knew what living in hiding was.

Sometimes, he invited Tony into his own lab, in Stark Tower, and let him lose on a problem. It was a joy to see Tony’s brain work when he was feeling safe. When he knew nobody would judge him for how quick he was.

Bruce said nothing. Never. And together, they prepared a better world and searched for every answers the universe had to give.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought stupid the way in comics scientists can find a solution to the problems of the day, whatever the branch! You would have to be some sort of genius outside of the human limits.


	7. Nick Fury

A light autumn rain was falling and it was almost midnight when Nick Fury arrived home and found Tony Stark in his living room, playing with Goose and a pointer laser.

See, that was strange for a lot of reasons.

One, Goose would be more the type to eat a stranger entering his territory than to play.

Two, nobody was supposed to know where Nick lived. It was an ultrasecure location, on file only on some very secure in the Pentagon, and nowhere at Shield.

“Eh Nick,” Stark said, not even turning in direction of Nick and the gun in his hand, “I bought pizzas and beer. Want dinner?” On the other side of the room, Nick could see the armour in sentry mode. He was pretty sure that thing wasn’t quick enough to stop a bullet, since Stark was outside of it. He was also sure Jarvis would flatten him like a fly on the wall if he killed his creator, and for a moment the risk seemed worth it, because it was late, Nick was exhausted, and he had spent the day trying to convince the Chinese Minister of National Defence to use his brain more than his patriotic pride, and totally without success, and now Tony Stark was in his home, which mean he would have to move out, something security already made him to do twice a year.

“It better be exceptional food Stark,” he growled, putting back his weapon in his holster.

“Flew the pizzas from Napoli, and the beer from Belgium.”

That made Nick pause in the usual task of setting back his alarm system and taking his coat off.

“That bad?” he asked, his eye on Stark’s face. The other man had finally turned and Nick didn’t like that he wasn’t joking, that he wasn’t smiling, didn’t like the dark circles under his eyes.

“Pizzas first,” Stark said and stopped Nick’s protests.

“You’ll need strength to hear that. And the beer will take the edge of the horror.”

“Is it goddam aliens again?”

“I wish. Sit. Eat. Drink.”

Nick did. The pizza was excellent, the beer too, and if he didn’t exactly take his time, he did his best to savour it. In this sort of job, nobody knew when there would be enough time next for a hot meal, and Stark seemed ready to drop the hot mess of the decade on Nick’s lap.

Sometimes he regretted not leaving with Carol and the Skrulls!

Stark himself played with his food more than anything. He didn’t touch the beer. Nick was beginning to feel quite anxious.

“Ok, let’s talk about Jarvis,” Stark said finally.

“Did you unleash Skynet on the world? Did every SF movie taught you nothing?”

“Nick, I’m the hilarious one in this relationship, let’s stay on track, ok? Ok…..”

“Stark?”

“Yeah, yeah. Jarvis…. Jarvis is quite smart.”

“Thank you, Sir,” the armour said.

“Telling it as it is, J. Still good on the anti-surveillance measures?”

“Nick Fury and yourself are officially having a row about the stranglehold of the World Council on Shield, and their desire to use the same sort of command on the Avengers.”

“Perfect, J.”

“Are we about to have a row about the stranglehold of the World Council on Shield, and their desire to use the same sort of command on the Avengers?”

“Not right now, pirate of my heart, it will be for after. No, today, we’re about to talk about Hydra.”

“Are you keeping me from my bed for a history lesson?”

“More for a horror story. You see, just before the battle of New York, Jarvis entered your system.”

“Yeah, it was a pain in the ass to remove it.”

“Him, Nick, him.”

“To the fact, Stark!”

“You never really remove J.”

“Stark! Do you have any idea how many laws-“

“Don’t serve me that crap! Shield is only respecting laws when it serves you. The numbers of international borders… But that’s not the subject. J started to find irregularities. Not big stuff…just breadcrumbs. But his computation capacities are way ahead of what he pretends usually. He started digging, then made me aware of the problems. We hacked other agencies-“

“Mother-“

“-almost the whole alphabet soup at home in fact-”

“Stark!”

“-and the more we dug, the more we had paths to follow, the more we dug. We did a little hacking in other countries –“

“-and now it’s an international incident, goddamit-“

“-and the problem isn’t as bad elsewhere, except in the UK and Russia, don’t ask me why –“

“STARK!!!!”

“What? Why are you always trying to interrupt me?”

“Because you aren’t arriving to the point, all of this better –“

“Hydra is alive and has infiltrated the Shield for years. The tumour has been growing slowly but surely. They are in most agencies too, ready to take control.”

There was a moment of silence as Nick tried to swallow the enormity of what he was hearing. As he opened his mouth to talk, Stark cut him:

“Don’t make me the insult of asking if I’m sure or if I’m joking. You can laugh of everything, but not Nazis.”

“….fuck.”

“Yeah. But no fear, Nick-dear, I have a plan.”

“Double fuck.”

“Don’t talk like that to the man about to save your balls.”

“Please never talk about my genitals again.”

“Ok, I have contacts in a few agencies. I have selected higher-ups cogs who aren’t Hydra, and solved problems for them.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it’s wonderful what J and I can do. There was a North Korean spy in Quai d’Orsay, for example, and now I have very competent french agents feeling quite grateful. And in the FBI-“

“Wait a minute, the North Korean, we followed the cases, which happened last week.”

“Yeah, as I said, I built contacts in important agencies.”

“Did you…did you ….are you trying to say you infiltrated yourself in most of the world’s intelligence agencies in the six months since the battle of New York?”

“Not all of them, only a good chunk of them. And in three months only, before I was busy with New York’s reconstruction and making sure I had every little bits of Hydra probably tagged. And don’t make that face, those are good news. Now, we can root out Hydra. I have a plan, and contacts. We can strike everywhere on the globe at the moment, scoop out every bad guy in the same strike, to be sure no part of the tentacles escape to grow again. I wanted to do you the courtesy of telling you myself, as Shield’s cancer is in the worst state of all of them. But the plan is ready, every packet of intel for my contacts too. How’s next week for you to save the world?”

“…. You should have bought something stronger than beer. And talked to someone before, if Hydra had sniffed your research…”

“I have a dead man switch. You and a few others people would have learned everything of my research if I didn’t reset it myself every thirty-six hours.”

Nick put his head in his hands.

“Under my goddam nose-“he whispered. A hand on his shoulder, awkward and doing its best for comfort.

Then Nick Fury straightened up, like he had done in every crisis, and said: “Talk to me about your plan.”


	8. Clint & Laura

Something was brewing. Clint wasn’t the sort of man, even PL, Post- Loki, to miss a clue. Watching was some sort of talent of him. Even when he wasn’t really trying, his brain was observing, cataloguing.

So, something was brewing in the highest levels of Shield, and he had been put aside from it. He had waited for that since he had woken up from his brainwashing, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It had been strongly suggested he took a few days, not at Shield, not at the Tower, and he had limped back to his wife. Natasha was on a mission, and not taking his call, that was normal, but what had hurt particularly was that Clint knew Coulson, his handler, the first person he had trusted after coming into Shield, the man who had been his best man at his wedding, wasn’t taking his calls either, and Clint knew the other agent was in New York.

Laura was letting him nurse his hurts with a hot cocoa and puttering in her studio, working on an order, when Clint heard the car. It was an old model, old enough that Clint would have bet on lost students in a cross country trip.

Tony Stark and Coulson were very much not what he would have bet on for the occupants. Stark looked furious and Phil looked exhausted, something that wasn’t surprising for a man locked in a car with Tony-silent-is-for-the-weak-Stark.

The billionaire didn’t even salute Clint, just entered the house he wasn’t supposed to know existed, stomping down like a teenager.

“Sir?” Clint asked.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more before,” Coulson smiled, and Clint took that in his soul and kept it. He wasn’t cast out.

“I’m already late,” Coulson continued, “Stark will fill you in, once he stop sulking. From now, you’re on a total black out. No outside communication, no trip in town, nothing. You’re bodyguarding Stark, and by that I mean he stays there and doesn’t communicate with anyone.”

“How the fuck did you convince him of that?”

“I emotionally blackmailed him with my fragile physical state and the future of the human race?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Coulson took his shoulders and Clint’s brain crashed. Coulson was the older brother Barney should have been, Coulson was family, had been for years, before Laura, before Natasha, Coulson had taken a young, lost punk with blood on his hand and made him into an agent of Shield, into someone Laura could love, into someone Clint could look into the mirror, but the numbers of time they had touched could be taken into account with two hands, and most of the time one of them had been dying.

“Tony Stark must survive what will happen in the next few days,” Coulson enunciated very clearly, “Because he will rebuild, if everything crash and burn. Nobody will find him there, I made sure of it, but I need you to sit on him if he panics and tries to run to help us. Tony Stark can’t leave until further notice. I have never given you a most important order. Do you understand?”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Clint answered, because Coulson had ordered, and Clint didn’t really need anything else.

Once the car was gone, Clint went inside.

Tony had already taken apart the coffee maker and the radio, and was building something from the two of them.

“No exterior communication,” Clint said, and Tony made a face.

“I wasn’t-“

“Yeah, only I’m not smart enough to understand what you could build. So no electronics.”

Tony’s face went epic.

“Coulson’s orders,” Clint said to lighten the orders, and Tony’s grimaced. One day, Clint would learn what linked the two of them since the battle of New York. It was like Tony was feeling responsible for Coulson. He was careful with the agent in a way he never was with anyone, except Bruce and Pepper Potts.

“Come met Laura,” he said to distract the genius.

Tony stayed one week with them and that was the strangest week in a long time for Clint, including the occasional alien invasion.

“I think he’s bored,” Laura said to him, the first night, once they were in bed.

Tony had read every book in the house in that day, including the ones who had been Laura’s father, who had had the farm before them. Then, he had taken apart and put together again the tractor. The tractor that was now floating.

“It’s to help with the problems of hardpan,” he had said, and Clint had no idea what that was, but Laura hadn’t yelled, like she did when something of her late father disappeared, so it must have been good.

At dinner, he had watched with sharp eyes Laura prepared the chicken, then designed a more efficient energy-wise oven unto his napkin. When the time had come for bed, his nervous energy had dissolved into fidgeting.

“I’m not used to doing nothing!” He had snapped at Clint the next morning, once Clint couldn’t take it anymore, “I should be out there, helping.” There was something manic in his eyes, and Clint saw the moment where he really would need to sit on him, until Laura had gone into the attics, and back down with big rolls of paper tablecloth Clint didn’t remember they had.

She had given them to Tony, with a big boxes of pen.

“What am I supposed to do with that?” Tony had asked, sullen.

“You’re an inventor, aren’t you? Then invent. When was the last time you could entirely devote yourself to that? You can’t do research right now, but I would guess you have enough knowledge in your head to design a few things without having to search for numbers before.”

Clint had thought it was a jest, but Laura had, in fact, always been better with people than himself.

Tony had pushed around the furniture’s in the living room, to have more place for the paper, and started scribbling.

Sometimes, Clint or Laura asked questions like “What are you drawing right now?”

And Tony would answer: “A better artificial heart.” Or “An arc reactor plane. Fuel, phew, what were they thinking?”, or something that looked like English but was a mystery like “A treatment for the Tay–Sachs disease”. Or “A tool to trap carbon dioxide, climate change has waited too long.” Or Clint’s favourite: “A moon station.”

Tony used an entire morning for what he told Clint were the six remaining Millennium Prize Problems, and Clint had no idea what that was, but Laura, who always had an interest in science, baked Tony her mom famous chocolate cake, something that hadn’t made an appearance since she had seen a documentary about the evil of refined sugar, so he supposed it was impressive of Tony to solve them.

“If I solve other unsolved problems in mathematics, could we have more cake?” had asked Tony at the end of the dinner, then disappeared into the living room to do just that. Whoever Barry Simon was, Clint was sure his problems wouldn’t resist Tony Stark on a quest for more chocolate. And he was right.

Tony then took an afternoon of with Laura, to learn gardening, even if Laura insisted that wasn’t something that could be learned in a few hours, that nature didn’t work like that. At dinner, between scribbling a future experiment to solve the origin of the alpha effect, something Clint vaguely understood had a rapport with chemistry but couldn’t be put in use before Tony had access to a lab to implement it, and something about protein folding, Tony babbled about his plans for the Maria Stark foundation to preserve heirloom varieties.

“Thought you would be all over genetic modified crop?” Clint remarked, and Tony had huffed: “Not at the cost of genetic variety loss. People are stupid.”

People were stupid for a lot of things, in Tony’s mouth, but after all those hours in his company, Clint understood it wasn’t an attack of the genius, but a baffling statement. People broke the world, and other people; and Tony didn’t just understand _why_.

After one week, Coulson came back, chauffeured, because he had a broken arm. He told Clint, Tony and Laura, about the fall of Hydra, and as Tony was loading his rolls of tablecloth research into the car, Coulson asked Clint:

“Not too sad to have been away for the Hydra fight?”

“No. I understand why you did. Humanity needs Tony to live. He will change the world. Also, don’t let him tinker with Lola, unless you want it flying.”

“You say that like it would be a bad thing.”

And Coulson left, with a genius and the answers to make the world a little better, written in purple glittery ink on pastel paper tablecloth.


	9. Maria Hill

The Winter Soldier had been one of Hydra’s best secrets, and now, he was Shield’s best kept secret. Nobody had touched the cryo-pod since the strike team, led by Coulson himself, took down the Hydra agents guarding the Winter Soldier between missions. They brought him home from DC, where the pod was, to New York, but the Shield scientists didn’t want to wake him up until they had a better grasp on how. How to minimize the pain of leaving cryo sleep, how to broke the conditioning, how to make the oldest Prisoner of War of the USA finally free, after seventy years.

Nobody warned Steve Rogers about him either. Not until they were sure the Asset could be made human again, and not into a weapon.

Maria Hill had the vague suspicion than Nick Fury feared the Soldier would need to be put down like a rabid dog, and that it would be best if Rogers never knew, in that case.

In one of Shield-don’t-exist-officially-safe-house in New York, Maria guarded the pod. No outside communication. No electronics, not even a glimpse of it. No paper trails in Shield computers. Not a trace, Nick Fury and Coulson were quite adamant on it. And to Maria, they gave the truth, to her and her only of the Shield superior officers, because a secret is better kept when the numbers of person on it is reduced.

No trace, because on the Soldier’s hands was dripping the blood of Maria and Howard Stark, and Iron Man was a Shield’s asset. The rest of it, that nobody knew what should be done if Iron Man, who saved all of New York’s population, killed a man in cold blood and revenge, and that they didn’t know if they would succeed in stopping him, and fond best to simply remove the temptation, in not telling him, they didn’t say, but Maria was smart enough to understand.

She still wasn’t surprised one morning to find him watching the pod. She had no idea how he found them, how he broke into the house. Her hand fond her weapon, but she hesitates. Nobody told her how far she was supposed to go to protect Barnes. Maria breathes Shield, and Stark is an advantage for Shield, even if he refuses to build them weapons. Shield’s lives have been saved countless times by his inventions.

Stark didn’t attack. He was dressed in civilian, but on his side, the suitcase screamed of the possibility of Iron Man entering the fray. Maria still took her hand of her weapon, because in Stark’s hands, there were one of those Starbuck thing used to carry more than one coffee easily, and two coffees. People preparing for murder rarely bring coffee, and she found best not to provoke him.

“One of them better be for me,” Maria said.

“Two shoots of expresso, and enough sugar to give you cavities,” Stark said, without taking his eyes from the cryo-pod, and he gave her one of the cups.

After a moment of silence, where he seemed to hesitate, he also gave her two of those devices he used to bring documents to Shield when he did them the curtesy of pretending Jarvis wasn’t in their system and couldn’t simply put anything he wanted in it. It was supposed to be USB devices, but Maria had used them before, and thought they were to USB devices what an Airbus was to Icaru’s wings.

“What’s on it?” She asked, taking a first sip of coffee. If he wanted to kill Barnes, there were simpler ways than to drug her, and frankly, she never, ever, said no to coffee.

“Data on the pod. A protocol to wake him up. And another to break the programming, and bring back everything Hydra deleted from his brain. Can’t affirm he will like what he remembers, however. The stuff from his file is nightmarish.”

He finally turned to her, and he was ashen, clearly exhausted, but there was a spark in his eyes. Those were the eyes of a man who had struggled with his inner demon, and come on top.

“You know,” Maria said.

“About dear old Dad’s misfits in recreating the serum and Hydra’s decision to take him out, using Barnes? Yeah, I’ve known for almost as long as I’ve known about Hydra.”

He had something that pretended to be a smile, but would have broken a heart weaker than Maria’s to witness.

“For years, I’ve thought Howard guilty of my Mom’s death, because of alcohol, and he was, but in a different way. Ironic, wasn’t it?”

“Hydra is the true culpable,” Maria shoot back.

Another moment of silence, as Stark looked at the pod again, then he turned to her more fully, his shoulders dropping.

“Yeah, I suppose it is,” he said, and Mari knew. Knew what he had struggled about, knew Barnes was in no danger from that man.

“What’s on the second device?”

“Heard your mom was diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer-”

“Did you hack my-“

“-give that to her doctor. They can call SI if they want other data. We’re going public with it next month. No use, yet, for people in last stages, but for others, it will slow down the illness enough that they will die of old age before Alzheimer will be enough of a problems to affect their lives.”

He was already leaving, after dropping such a bombshell.

“Stark!! Stark, you can’t-“

No answers.

Maria learned a few things that day.

That Stark was a bit of a drama queen, who loved to have the last word. That he was much more than an engineer of missiles and flying suits of armours.

And that the only thing bigger than his brain was his heart.


	10. Thor

Big, blond and dumb, this is what people believe of Thor. In their defence, for hundreds of years, he never went anywhere without Loki, and every one would look dumb, in comparison to Loki. Also in their defence, the older and wiser Thor became, even if sometimes it was a bumpy ride, the more he understood the advantage it could be to be believed a bit of an idiot.

And no better proof that Shield, who let him go as he wants everywhere on Earth, when he was the Prince and fiercest warrior of an otherword powerful kingdom. Which proof had they, that he had really their best interest at heart?

Well, he had, but for old beings like the Asgardians, what happened between him and Loki could have been nothing much than a spat, soon forgotten…

Luckily for Earth, Thor wanted nothing more than good things for the whole planet and he was ready to help the best he could. He wanted to atone for centuries of dumbness and war-lust.

That was why he had accepted Tony Stark’s invitation that afternoon. He saw in the human the same desire, almost unquenchable, almost burning, to atone for past sins. He hadn’t asked which ones. Sometimes, a man needs to carry his more painful memories alone. But if one day Tony wanted a brother in arms’ ear, Thor would be there. Perhaps that day had come? Nobody had seen the genius in one month, Thor had learned at Shield, the man reclusive in his workshop, the only trace he was alive the constant string of innovations coming their ways.

That afternoon, Tony had waited for him on the balcony and he had opened the glass door to him: “Welcome to my home,” he said, and offered bread and salt, and fine liquors.

Someone had done his homework the best the old texts had let him.

Tony had then opened his workshop for him and Thor had seen marvels of technologies he had sincerely thought humanities a few centuries far away. He hadn’t always been the most technology-oriented pupils for his teachers, but he still knew enough to understand how ahead of his time his teammate was.

“Look at that,” Tony said, and he projected the plans for a ship on a wall.

“It’s for inter-system travels,” Thor immediately remarked, “I thought your specie hadn’t send man-shipped missions more far away than the moon, yet.”

“We didn’t, and you perfectly know it, don’t play dumb!” Tony had made himself cutting, and Thor turned to the smaller man, surprised.

For the first time, he saw the haunted eyes, the exhaustion. It was more than battle wariness, and New York had been almost a year ago, with proper help, with competent healers, Thor thought Tony would have been better.

“Tell me why you called me there,” he asked, and Tony let himself on the couch with a sigh.

“The thinks I saw in space…” he said, and stopped.

“The mad Titan,” Thor encouraged.

“Yeah, that. And…the universe is enormous, and not exactly friendly.”

“No, not exactly. But you, Earth, you’re not without allies, Anthony.”

Tony had a pale smile.

“I want more for my people than a chance of surviving because an Asgardian prince like us, no offense. What if you’re called back? What if…” He stopped again.

“SI is deploying arc reactors all over the world as fast as we can. And we’re working on climate change and a lot of other problems that I really should have tackled long ago if I wasn’t the king of cowards, hiding away in my workshop-“

“Anthony, you-“

“-no let me finish. I’ve seen you with Shield. You know a ton about toning it down for the mass. But you never asked yourself how much you could accomplish if you didn’t hide? Well, me I’m done hiding. But I won’t be enough. I can make things better on Earth, I can…I have already in the plans a mission to Mars, because if our population continue growing, even with healing Earth, terraforming other worlds will become a necessity, I have started working on a protocol, I was thinking Mars then Venus, and I can invent as many ships as I want, I was thinking intergalactic ships, generational ones, I can never work fast enough. No matters how much coffee I drink, I have to sleep sometimes. Never. I have money, and brain, but it won’t be enough, and even if Pepper is good with blackmailing money from rich assohles, and even if I have more contact in the science community than people know, it won’t be enough. The Titan is coming, and I don’t think I will be ready, and I’m here, reinventing the wheel that your people have used for centuries!!!!!”

He stopped, took a big breath.

“Help me,” he said, and Thor saw it cost him, but also that Tony was ready to beg if necessary, for a chance for his people, a chance for Earth. Because he was right. No matters how smart he was, they would have needed a hundred, a thousand like him, to be ready for what was coming.

“I will bring back a delegation of Asgard’s scientists,” the prince said, and saw Tony fall back against the couch, strings cuts, taking careful breaths. Thor put a friendly hand on his shoulders.

“You aren’t alone,” he explained gently, “and I should have brought back people here long ago. Diplomatic ways will never be quick enough, not with the way your planet is divided, but scientists are smarter than rulers, once you put results in their hands. My people can teach you what you need, and you’ll teach other in return. Earth will be ready, we will all be ready. And we’ll finish the Mad Titan, for good, together, brother.”


	11. Steve

Three blocks around the Stark Tower were now closed permanently to circulation, but the cops manning the blockade let Steve pass on his Harley without problems.

The protesters were still so numerous that it took all Coulson talent to organize and to stop different group from tearing each other apart.

Some groups protested the Asgardians Tony was now working with, and the scientists from other planets that were slowly dripping down to Earth. The whole coalition slowly crystalizing around Thor and Tony against Thanos had been a success exceeding all hope and since Thanos and his troops had been flattened somewhere around Neptune’s orbit, the coalition had grown, switching from war to peace, sharing knowledge and research and resources in a way no period of history in the galaxy had known. But people being people, there were still protesters thinking Tony was selling them to aliens overlords.

Some groups protested Tony’s whole persona as the Merchant of Death which he had left behind years ago.

Some protested his sharing with other countries, thinking Tony’s brain should only be used to advance the god old USA, and leave behind the rest of the world. Those were more numerous that Steve would have liked, since he wrapped himself in the flag.

It seems Tony could never go right with some people. His sexuality, his political choices, his entire being was always deemed unworthy by some.

Some, getting more and more vocal, were advocating to keep him locked down in a maximum security complex, to ensure he wouldn’t fly away, to ensure his time would be used wisely to advance humanity. Like Tony was a resource, something to use in the time of his life, never knowing pleasure and friendship, something to be put to work, without rest, before age finally extinguished him. Like Tony resting was a waste of time, a time which should be used for him to do research, in domains chosen by other, most of the time those who advocated for that program.

Some groups were also militating for Tony to work on problems of their choices, let it be rare illness or a whole areas of trouble. There was never enough time for all the troubles of humanity, and every day it seemed more like all of them were counting on him to solve every one of them.

Happy himself seemed exhausted when Steve meet him in the lobby.

“Rough night?”

“The Chinese again, with their problems of soil pollution. They can seem to grasp that he can’t work only for them. And the French are a pain in the ass, again, with their preservation of history programs. But the good news are that nobody tried to hack us again in two whole month, a record.”

“What Jarvis did to the last one who tried was a good warning. Can I see him?”

“Always, Cap.”

Steve found Tony in the penthouse. A drink in one hand, he was sombrely watching through the glass the mass of protesters. At this angle, it seemed like a never ending mob. Steve took a second to watch him. The skin was too pale, the shadows under the eyes too deep, the goatee unkempt and the hair a whole mess. And it was nine in the morning, and certainly not water in the glass.

“Tony?”

The other man jumped so high it would have been comical in other circumstances and the glass’s liquid sloshed around enough to spill on the carpet.

Tony swore, sucked on his fingers, but let Steve take the glass without protests. As he was piloting his teammate to the nearest couch, Steve took a discreet sniff of the liquid. Vodka, pure, at nine in the morning. Tony was more at his limits that all of them had believed.

“What’s the problem in this fine morning?” Tony asked once he was seated. He had put on a smile, in a way Steve remembered the USO doing when they were exhausting and a politician was too close.

“What problems?” Steve asked, surprised.

“Well, what did you bring me to solve? Does Barnes has problem with his prosthesis again? I told him to stop punching that member of Quill’s ship with it.”

“No, no, Bucky is perfectly fine and totally happy with your gift.”

“Oh, good. Is it about one of the veterans program? Or the one helping discharged soldiers find work? I told them they could all become space mercenaries!? There won’t be soon demand for it, the same way there is almost no more demand on Earth.”

“My presence today has nothing to do with soldiers, Tony, past or present ones.”

“Oh. So, what program is causing problems? If this about creating a new one, it’s more Pepper’s turf, but of cause I can help-“

“Tony-“

“Or did you wanted to see Bruce? He’s in Madagascar again, there is some sort of ceremony there, to celebrate the end of leprosies on Earth, but he should be back next month, he just has a stop to make in India and-“

“Tony!!!”

“What?!”

“I’m not there for a program, for Bruce, for Pepper, for Rhodey or whatever link you will find between me and your third janitor.”

“Mary-Manuela is a very fine woman-“

“I don’t doubt it, but I’m there for _you_. And I am very late if you think I can’t visit without a demand.”

There was a spark of scepticism in Tony’s eyes, and not the first time, Steve called himself an idiot internally. How could have he been so blind at their first meeting? How could have he not seen that Tony would pour anything he was, and behind, to help, until nothing was left for himself.

Steve took his hand and Tony’s eyes crossed.

“I’m here to kidnap you. Pepper will play interference with the ONU, Rhodey is in charge of the world Council, Fury in charge of the world not meeting a fiery death during our absence, Natasha will keep the rogue states left in check and Thor is in charge of space.”

“My research-“

“Nothing time sensitive, Jarvis checked and double checked and triple checked. And Bruce is on call if someone needed help to decipher some of your equations urgently. Also, Clint is bodyguarding Pepper all week and glaring at everyone who makes her work harder. He calls that being the power behind the throne of Earth, and he really shouldn’t because if the press hear it, the conspiracies will fly again.”

Tony stayed silent. His gaze was pinning Steve down, that intelligent, otherworldly stare, which was usually hidden behind coloured glass to make people more comfortable.

“And us, what are we doing?” Tony finally asked and Steve took his hand. It had been a long time coming.

“A week of sun,” he prescribed, “on an island without anyone else. You can bring your tablet if you want.”

“Oh, how generous of you.”

“But I have every intention to seduce you out of our clothes at the first occasion and to let you too exhausted to even think about working.”

And for the first time, Steve saw a rare occurrence: Tony Stark out of words. He carried on, before Tony’s brain could rally and imagine how it was a joke, or a bad idea, or whatever Tony would imagine to deny the tension between them, that Steve, like almost everyone, wanted something of him. He caressed a cheek full of stubble.

“Your brain is wonderful,” he said, “but it’s your heart I have my sight on. And I’m a man with the plan, I always win at the end and I always deliver good on my promises.”

“The arrogance of you!” Tony protested, but despite himself, there was a curve to his lips, amused and perhaps a tad curious.

“I have been an idiot,” Steve said, “I should have fondued you in the first week of our acquaintance.”

“You should have what?”

“But I’m done waiting for the perfect time, or the good moment. There is nothing like the good moment, you have to provoke it. Life is short and the world is moving so fast. I want to move with it, and I want to do it with you. We’ll make each other crazy and yell at each other-“

“You’re selling it so well; man with a plan.”

“And I think we’ll make each other disgustingly happy and keep each other in check of our most terrible bad habits.”

And, moving slowly in case of protest, he planted a chaste kiss on Tony’s lips, a kiss that was more like the hundredth one between old lovers than the first one it was. A kiss that spoke of home and comfort, and Tony trembled under his hands.

“A week,” Steve whispered unto his lips,” A week apart of all of this, just you and me and seeing where it can go. No dead line, no demands, just the sun and us.”

Tony let his head ago against Steve’s shoulder and Steve closed his arms around him, like he was shielding him against the world.


	12. Epilogue

The sun slowly rising above the horizon of Mars was a beautiful vision and Steve appreciated it in peace, with the little point of sadness knowing he would probably never see it again. He had seen so much beauty in his life, and he would see more, but there was always a little something poignant at the idea of a last time.

The level of oxygen in the martian atmosphere was still a little weak for humanity, it wasn’t supposed to raise to Earth’s level before a few years, so he took his time in his trip back to the Martian Avengers Compound, to not need to use more. Around him, genetically modified succulents were decorating the landscape of green. How Mars had changed in five years only! Now, the once barren planet was home to six hundred billions humans, slightly more than Venus, and more colons were arriving every day in the biodomes cities.

When he was in his room, Steve exchanged his clothes for his space suit, with the Nomad insignia on the chest. It had been strange to renounce Captain America’s mantle, but he liked that he could have done it because his country didn’t need him in the same way, not because he was too disappointed in his country, like he had feared once or twice he would have to do.

And, really, to be a part of the first inter-galactic Earth-Asgard mission, it was better to go as a representing of all humanity, and not only one country.

He found Tony in the hangar, of course, going on last minutes minutia details with Rhodey, who was in charge of the Mars Avengers Compound. The ship in the centre of the enormous room was red and gold, of course, it was after all Tony’s brainchild, and nobody had had the heart to refuse him that. Especially since, at a time, it had seemed Tony wouldn’t go, Earth refusing to lose the golden egg. All Thor’s diplomatic weight as the newly crowned King of Asgard had been necessary.

But now…now, they were going.

Twenty-five members, ten human, ten Asgardians, and five other members of their Alliance, direction the NGC 1300 barred spiral galaxy, 61 million light-years away.

They weren’t sure they would come back one day.

It was a total mystery what they would find.

Tony has never been more resplendent at this idea. Something new, to learn, to explore. His brain didn’t scream in hunger in the same way, not now, but he was always happy to throw himself head first into new knowledge domains.

His nose still on his screen, his hand searched Steve’s own, and their wedding rings made a small sound against each other.

Together, they stepped into the ship, into adventures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your kind words, you're awesome readers.


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